If he invests his capital in unprofitable speculations, and produces, with the help of prepaid labour, useless commodities for which there is not sufficient demand, there will be, instead of overplus value, a diminishing of value, and instead of profit there will be loss. In such a case, instead of capital absorbing so much labour power, valueless labour on the contrary eats up so much capital. This case has been altogether overlooked by Marx. The fact is that not under any circumstances is the "rate of overplus value" the exact expression of the "amount of defrauded labour." Of course, if we could agree with Marx (p. 182) that the amount of capital whether constant or varying is "equal to nought," the reverse of this would be true. But to maintain this as an argument for proving that capital is unfruitful is merely begging the question.

Having thus been guarded against an assumption of the general principle laid down by our author, we may proceed to enter on his instructive description of various forms of fraud, to which the labourer is exposed in his dependence on the capitalist. It is here that Marx lays bare many of the dark sides of capitalism, which deserve our earnest consideration. The profit so obtained, according to Marx, is either absolute or relative.* Absolute surplus value depends partly on the number

Marx thus illustrates what he means by the absolute aud relative surplus value of work obtained by the employer. Let the real working day be represented by a line abc; let it be divided so that the line ab represents necessary time of labour (i.e., necessary for the support of life), and the line bc represent overplus labour. Then the absolute amount of overplus value obtained will be represented b

b-c; the relative amount of overni

by diminishing the line a-b.

of labour, i.e. he wants the

labour reduced toward

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of labourers employed, partly on the amount of profit on a day's labour of every one of them individually. The first of these leads to industrial enterprise on a large scale, the latter has a tendency chiefly to prolong the hours of labour for each day.

That such is the case Marx illustrates abundantly from the official returns of factory inspectors and others. He refers to Leonard Horner, one of the most able of these inspectors, to show how in "small thefts" of time at the beginning or end of the day's work, or by abrogating part of the hours of relief, nearly twenty-seven whole days annually are lost to the labourer, thus adding to the profits of the employer. By means of "nibbling and cribbling at meal times" too, advantage is taken by the employer, so that "moments are the elements of profit." A respectable factory owner remarked: "If you allow me to work ten minutes overtime daily, you will put £1000 annually into my pocket."

Overworking children used to be one of the crying evils of factory labour, before the restrictions placed on the employer by acts of parliament. A labourer in a tapestry factory, in giving evidence at a parliamentary inquiry, stated: "I used to carry my boy to and from the factory when he was seven, and he worked for sixteen hours daily. I often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he was not allowed to quit it." Startling and revolting accounts were given of the mischievous destruction of human life, of the young and old, by overwork and nightwork. Respectable employers themselves, who suffered most from the unscrupulous filching propensities of their competitors, demanded protection from the legislature for themselves and the unhappy victims of inhuman cupidity. (See Children's Employment Commission, Report I., 1863, p. 322.)

The fixing of a normal day of labour, i.e. regulation f the hours of labour by the state, as the result of a conflict of four centuries between capital and labour, is a subject to which Marx devotes a great deal of attention. He shows how the number of hours of labour for male adults, fixed by authority in the seventeenth century, in order to prolong the normal day of labour, is just equal to the number of hours per day to which children's work has been reduced by the same authority in our own century. Thus the limit put by the State of Massachusetts on the number of hours during which children under twelve years may be employed equals exactly the normal day of labour of a healthy journeyman, robust agricultural labourer, or blacksmith, in England towards the middle of the seventeenth century. The fact that capital found it difficult at that time to get "hands," when four days' wages sufficed to keep them for a week, led many economists of the day to recommend a prolongation of the normal labour day enforced by law, so as to prevent laziness and demoralization. Others, like Postlethwaite, were of a different opinion.

But the struggle continued more or less in favour of a normal day of labour extended to its maximum limit, and even beyond it, until twelve hours came to be considered at last as the natural time for a day's labour. Then towards the latter part of the eighteenth century the commencement of the unprecedented growth of industry caused a sudden and violent revulsion. The masses were impelled to embrace eagerly every opportunity of employment, and to gain in the increase of production. This powerful movement, like an avalanche, swept away “every restraint of nature and morality, the proper distinction between the sexes, and even between day and night. In 1860 an English judge found it necessary to have

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recourse to an almost talmudic subtilty to pronounce legally what was meant by day and night."

As soon however as the labouring classes recovered from the stupor into which the loud clamour for production had thrown them, they began to resist being overworked, in the very country which had given birth to the extension of industry, i.e. in England. Concessions were extorted from the employers of labour, and five acts were passed by parliament in favour of the labourers, from 1802 to 1833, but were of no avail for thirty years, in the absence of proper authority to enforce them. And thus, until the act of 1833 was passed, children and young persons" were worked the whole night and the whole day ad libitum.” (See Report of Inspectors of Factories, 30th April, 1860, p. 51.) This act only prohibited the work of young persons (i.e. from thirteen to eighteen) from exceeding twelve hours per day, and that of others fifteen hours. Even this legislative measure was nullified by inhuman employers, who succeeded in circumventing the law by a complicated system of relieving or shifting of hands, moving about the labourers in the factory so as to puzzle the inspectors and elude prosecution. At last, with the agitation of the Chartists, and the repeal of the corn laws, came in what is known as the ten hours' movement. After a preliminary act for the protection of women and young persons was passed, the punctilious minutia of which show the difficulty of the law in coping with the slippery manipulation of the employers of labour, the ten hours' labour day was fixed by parliament, which came into operation in 1848, notwithstanding the opposition of the free-trade advocates, Cobden and Bright.

A powerful reaction followed upon this, during which the employers dismissed many of their hands, and with more

or less success tried to escape the consequences of this act of parliament. Loud complaints against this and the tardy and uncertain enforcement of the law in some places were heard from the operatives; at their meetings held in Lancashire and Yorkshire the act was called a mere humbug and a parliamentary fiction, and after some struggles in the courts of law a compromise was come to, which was ratified in another act of parliament in 1850, and that again was supplemented in 1853, just half a century after the first legislative act on the same subject. This shows how hard the struggle was before the employers could be brought to reason, and to listen to the dictates of humanity.

The important legislative measures of 1867, known under the name of Factory Acts Extension Act, and an Act for Regulating Workshops, were passed also in favour of the labouring classes, such being the imperative necessity of state interference in order to prevent the utter degradation of the labourer, and to protect the honest employer against unprincipled competitors who owed their success to brutal sacrifice of human life.

Such have been the struggles continued with varied success by the two contending parties, and such has been the success of the labouring classes in obtaining favourable concessions and legislation of an exceptional kind from the British parliament.

Having given this historical sketch from Karl Marx, and not unmindful of demands made since to induce the legislature to reduce the normal hours of labour to nine or even eight per day, we may be permitted to state our own opinion on this subject. The fixing of the normal day by law has had upon the whole a favourable effect; and if the selection of inspectors is always made wisely, so as to ensure impartiality and the supremacy of the law, much